HIFA

I drug my feet.   Everyone was making such a big deal about it, its been terribly cold, and my three year old enjoys neither smoking in public or mosh pits (that I know of).  We went at the last minute anyway...

So glad we did - such fun! 

HIFA, an international arts festival, entertains the affluent art loving masses of our capitol city (and then us) for a little over a week once each fall. It was the biggest organized event of the month, possibly the year, to many people in my African country.  Embassies located in the city sponsor artists to represent their country in performing arts that range from music to acrobatics.  The performances are then shown in the city's largest park, taking place on four stages.  Some shows are free; others make for high priced tickets.  Locals go crazy for HIFA, lining up en mass to buy as many tickets as they can get their hands on for a week of entertainment.  Many locals speak of HIFA like a drug, (seriously, like in a strange, creepy way) taking in multiple shows every day to the point of exhaustion and empty pockets to get their year long fix of culture. 

 

Though performances go late into the night, we took in a daytime show with our three year old and some friends. We saw an amazing musical act from Australia that we will absolutely have to see again if the stars align next year.

All sorts of arts, local handmade goods, festival foods, and random giant puppets completed the experience.

My favorite part... The garbage cans made of garbage!!

Finishing a Week of Bounty Meditations: Harvest

Surprising  how many times I’ve made my way out to the same tiny village an hour outside of the city.  The wonderful village of Juru keeps calling!  A few weeks ago, spurred on by the dropping temperatures and local preparations for winter here in our region of higher altitude, we found ourselves in Juru once again. 

Eight months earlier, my husband’s eleventh graders helped a number of families associated with our school’s sister school to plant maize crops for the year.  Though a number of foods are planted and harvested at any time of year in constant rotation in the tropics, maize crops are only planted once per year.  But they are some of the most important.  Maize, a white corn equivalent in texture to seed corn fed to cattle in the US, provides millions of families with their staple, sadza.  

During the weeks of harvest, done almost entirely by hand, urban dwellers can often be found returning to their rural roots to help with this important time of year.  Celebrating the bounties that come from harvest become wonderful reasons for community get-togethers, neighbors helping neighbors and friends helping friends.  We were honored to get to be a part of such a special tradition.  What fun!!  

 

A wonderful community of older women gathered to teach us the art of gathering maize.

Jonas was tickled to find our friend Ryan among the students that came to volunteer.  Here we dive right in.

I asked what this tool was called and received a look of ridiculousness.  "An ax," I was told.  So there you have it.  An ax is used first to chop the cornstalk at its base.  The cornstalks are then thrown into a pile that everyone else shares.

When we got home three year old Jonas asked for a new toy. "An ax!" he said.  "I'll be so so careful."

 

The husk is removed.  There is very little silk to fight with on these dry ears.

One pile of husk and stalk is made.  The ears of maize are thrown into separate piles on the ground.

The husks and stalks will be laid out to dry and then fed to cattle during the winter.  Good fiber, but little nutritional value.

The maize is then picked up and carried to a cattle cart.  It will be taken to the mill to be ground into maize meal and cooked into sadza. This harvest will be the main food this family eats for a year.

 

Jonas made a sweet friend. (I am kicking myself right now because his name is on the tip of my tongue.)  "I promise to bring a ball back next time,"Jonas tells him.

 

The maize ears are put into the cattle cart just before we take tea.  Jonas loves "shooting" his ears into the cart almost as much as I love the fact that the two cattle are named "Acornhead" and "Mazoe."  (Sure, can't remember a child's name; but cattle?  No problem.)

In days previous to this, pumpkins and African cucumbers, planted on the ground to vine up the maize stalks, have been harvested.  The remnants of those plants provide a little green to an otherwise brown field.

Jonas has announced that he will not insist on being carried when he is four.  I'll believe it when I see it. Here we take a beautiful walk that leads us to another house and field. 

Then the work begins again.

 A big but organized mess when all is said and done! Such a fun way to spend a day.  Thanks for including us in your harvest, Juru!

Bounty Meditations: Thinking Differently

Related to my recent meditations on bounty, please find two fascinating projects/studies I have thoroughly enjoyed discovering and hope you do, too!

The first link is a short film about 1st world problems.  Loved it.  

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zm32ZPvGIYY

The second link is a study my friend Beth found recently on the dominant and surprising influence of culture on what we think is fact.  Incredibly interesting, a highly recommended read! 

http://www.psmag.com/magazines/pacific-standard-cover-story/joe-henrich-weird-ultimatum-game-shaking-up-psychology-economics-53135/

Bounty Meditations: Possessions Around the World

Apologies for the sudden break in posts!  Such internet problems, which are always blamed, depending on who you ask, on our house’s propensity to be hit by lightening, a cable located in the Mediterranean Ocean, the price of beef, naughty birds, or a tower held together by tape.  Back up and running.

For now.

A ten minute meditation on your own bounty...

Please find two fascinating projects/studies done on the possession of goods around the world:

The first link is a great photography project on what children's possessions look like around the world.   http://www.featureshoot.com/2013/03/photos-of-children-from-around-the-world-with-their-most-prized-possessions/

The second link is a photographic explanation of what a week of groceries looks like in different countries throughout the world.  http://fstoppers.com/what-a-week-of-groceries-looks-like-around-the-world

Bounty Meditations: Food for Thought

Fast fact: While many people in Westernized nations try to speed up their metabolisms to be able to eat more, the opposite is true of many people in third world nations.

In layman's terms, metabolism is the rate at which your body burns calories.  The typical Shona schedule in my country has been adopted by a group of people needing to stretch food as far as possible. It has been ingeniously designed, without the formal  knowledge of scientific biological mechanisms, to slow down the metabolism, allowing people to eat less by burning less calories.

A typical Shona schedule involves work and play from daybreak until 9 or 10 am.  At this time, the first food of the day is then ingested. When one tries to speed up a metabolism, it is often recommended that food be eaten within an hour at most of rising. Waiting so long into the day often results in a slowed metabolism. As our gardener puts it, "You wait to turn on the hungry longer!" This meal, called "tea" typically involves bread or toast (often smeared with mashed avocado, fruit, or jam) and tea with large amounts of sugar. Sometimes leftover sadza is also eaten, mixed with mashed groundnuts (also called peanut butter).

Work and play is then done from 10 or 11 until approximately 1 or 2 pm.  Another tea is then taken. This tea often looks more like a lunch, though, with vegetables, fruit, eggs, biscuits, or a non-refrigerated dairy product called lactose.  Hot tea is again the typical drink of choice.  This is interesting, as iced water and cold drinks are typically understood to speed up the metabolism.

Work and play is continued in the afternoon, usually ending around 5 pm.  A dinner, always the largest meal of the day, is often a vegetable dish with sauce and sadza.  It is eaten just before an early bedtime.  Dinner then sits in the stomach for a long time, slowly digesting.  "We go to bed fat!" I am told.  More food will not be eaten for another 15 hours or so.

It would be fascinating to see how other cultures around the world have unconsciously adjusted their schedules to get the most from their limited bounties.  Funny how our Westernized world is now moving in the opposite direction!

* Please note that it is never my intention to overgeneralize or stereotype when discussing other cultures.  It is my intention to discuss broad ideas and ways of living, but never to imply that there are not thousands of people who will not fit into these categories.   

Bounty Meditations: Sweet Treats

One of our country's most popular candy bars: The Bounty.

Bounty Meditations: The Compost Bucket

Our compost bucket speaks to me every day.  And usually it's not very flattering.

Our compost bucket is one of those things I find myself taking care of whenever possible instead of letting anyone else touch it.  Because it's in that bucket that my different upbringing is pointed out.  I don't consider myself a wasteful person, but I don't eat the core of the apple.  I don't eat the rind of the watermelon, or the skin of the mango.  My child doesn't eat the tooth-breaking seeds found in guava.  And he likes the skin cut off his pears.  If I humored him, he'd still have me peeling his grapes. Burnt food in the bottom of the pot?  Put it in the compost. Unappetizing five day old leftovers?  Compost.

Our gardener's family, in contrast, has almost no compost.  Though they will throw a stem out the door here and there at times, they waste nothing.  I remember my horror the first time I let my housekeeper make us a meal called "chicken bones." This common Shona dish is made when the leftover chicken bones from a meal are gathered from everyone’s plates, rinsed, and stored for the next day.   They are then boiled in a pot with spinach or rape (both large tough greens here) and an (MSG laden) powdered chicken seasoning.  The dish is served, chicken bones and all, with Sadza.  One has to stop chewing and pull sharp pieces of bone out of one's mouth to eat it.  It is considered a special treat, as the amount of meat consumed in the Shona diet can be sporadic, dependent upon the economic circumstances of the family. Tasty, but I admittedly stopped at cracking the bones open to suck out the marrow.

On the contrary, we have cooked for our housekeeper and gardener a number of times.  We made a large family dinner for our gardener’s family one evening, and sat around our dinner table chatting as the gardener’s two children, Shown and Allister ("Lilly"), ate with Jonas on the floor.  Jonas (usually a good eater) had taken four bites, declared he was done, and had run away to play, leaving his full plate on the floor.  Meanwhile, five year old Shown ate a full two giant plates before asking his parents to be excused.  Little Lilly, though, methodically ate three plates of food with his chubby two year old fingers.  Every time he asked for more, I heaped his plate full and watched his eyes sparkle as I set the plate back down in front of him.  It was way too much for a two year old, but I wanted him to feel free to eat as much as he liked without being shy about asking for more.  Showing my love by overfeeding someone?  Yep.  That's pretty much my style.

Partially into his third plate, though, Lilly slowed down.  Suddenly he started bawling, hysterically wailing a number of Shona words I did not understand. It was alarming; Lilly was in a great deal of pain. I looked at the gardener's wife quizzically as she rubbed his stretched tummy.  "I'm sorry, Madame," she had apologized, embarrassed. "Allister is crying because he cannot clear his plate.  He has tried as hard as he can but now he is in pain."

"You have to eat what you are given," Shown chimed in. "That's the rule!"

I looked at my child's rotting plate in the corner and embarrassment washed over me.  Jonas would eat a snack later, for sure, when it was convenient for him.  Whenever Jonas is hungry, he gets food.  Meanwhile I had made Lilly sick with my lack of understanding.  

Taught from an early age, it is a truly impressive characteristic of many Shona people in my country. Waste not, want not.  Clear your plate.  Eat when you can get it, even if it makes you sick.  Be grateful for calories.  It's a stark contrast to where I come from.   I come from a land of abundance, where the focus is on not eating too much.  Where obesity troubles more people than starvation.  Where diet obsessions like limiting calories and fats and carbs and any other latest craze originate.  Where we try to speed up our metabolism so we can eat more.  Where we make light hearted jokes about the strange things our Depression-era relatives are willing to eat.  Where I have complained about my propensity to overeat before polishing off my child's plate. Where, patting myself on the back for self control, I have scraped Jonas' half-eaten plate into the compost bucket.

That horrible compost bucket.  If only it didn't speak so loudly.

Bounty Meditations: Rediscovering Words

In the U.S. I used the word bounty for cheesy Thanksgiving dinner prayers or deep discussions about paper towels.  But it means something different in Africa.  Actually, it means a lot.

“Hi,” an orphan girl had said as she sat down next to me recently in a rural orphanage an hour out of my city. She looked ahead.

“What’s your name?” I’d asked her, amused.

“I’m Isabelle.  It means my God is a God of plenty.  My bounty will be good.” I had nodded.  “What’s your name?” she asked.

“It’s Cheri. Nice to meet you,” I’d smiled.

“But what does it mean?”

“Oh, umm… it means my dear or my darling in French.” She looked confused so I continued, “It means my love.”

“And do you show it?” Isabelle looked at me with her eyebrows raised, expectantly.  I was pretty sure there was a forty year old in this kid’s body. “Do you show love?”

I had hesitated, not sure of how to answer. “Yeah… I hope so.  I hope that’s what people think of me.”

“Hope is not good enough,” she corrected me. “You must show it. You have to live your name.”  

Wow. Well, someone was teaching this kid, and apparently it wasn’t me. 

During a different orphanage visit I overheard children discussing the meaning of their names with a friend of mine. A little boy named Kutenda chimed in. “My name means you have to be thankful!" he had half-way announced proudly and maybe just slightly half-way complained.  Kutenda (actually meaning "to thank") was only four, but already he knew.

Words and names mean a lot on this continent.  They aren’t just symbolic. They are used as points of action and focus, like an idea one clings to. 

One of the most powerful words in my country is bounty.  On a continent where subsistence farming is common, where meager crops are life-blood, and where hunger and starvation are real, bounty is a focus. And certainly, Kutenda is right. You have to be thankful.  

When I mentioned this topic recently to a white local, she had looked at me surprised.  I realized once again that should I choose to stay in The Bubble, isolated from the non-affluent populations that are ever present but often ignored, I would never recognize powerful beautiful concepts, like bounty, that propel lives forward daily.  Over the next week I’m going to be sharing some quick thoughts about a word in which this blessed, affluent family could always use some more meditation.

A Rose by Any Other Name...

 

I have always been the person that looked at people with difficult hobbies and rolled my eyes.
Mountain climbing? Um, no.
Computer programming? Uh-uh.
Underwater basket-weaving? I don't think so.

I've always gone for the slightly easier ones.
Flower picking? Done.
Writing? Sure.
Eating? Um, yeah.

So you will be surprised when I tell you that I have recently become obsessed with an idiotically difficult hobby while here in Africa.  My latest obsession is collecting pictures of bus names.  Though the buses are easy to find -they are everywhere both in and out of town- the difficulty is capturing one on film.  These buses slow down for no one.  Notorious for being the most unsafely operated vehicles on the road, the buses of our country (also called combis) zip around roads at all hours of the day.

There are a number of fascinating things about our combis...

-They can squeeze twenty grown men in a vehicle the size of a large van.
-They do not follow a route, though they almost all loosely meet up with a city center at some point.
-Because there are few bus stops, one person on the bus (sometimes an employee, sometimes not)  whistles or screams down streets as passengers are searched for.
-And they make NYC taxi drivers look like rookies.

All fascinating... if you're not following one.  But nothing is as fascinating, and entertaining, as the strange names these buses adopt in lieu of a route designation.  I'll collect more in the coming months, but here are some of the bus names I've seen (and photographed if I'm lucky) over the past few months:

"Little Hero"

"Cold Power"

 Tiyanjane- "understand each other"

"January 21"  (Not sure what happened on this date!)

 Either "Tears of Joy" or "God's Temple"... can't tell!

 Mafuta- "Fat"

 "Secret"

 "Hope Junior"

"God's Time is the Best"

"Street Vybz"

Unpictured, but you'll just have to trust me. Can't believe I don't have these pictures, but they're all real, I swear:

Baby Boy Supreme

Anointed (always spelled wrong, but with about five different companies' logos)

Bonanza!

Nothing To Do

Why Not?

You've Arrived

Two Stars Brutus

Acts

Fab Five

Superman

Panache

One Minute More

On the Couch

Oh Baby

Something French 

Red Carpet

No Way Out

Genesis

Crystal Skywalker

Qualtiy Time

Go Koko Power!

Not Going Back
One Leg Tours

4th Egg of Life

Big Fishy

Testimony

FunGo

Franklin Reloaded

Arduous Tours